One remake I'm very intrigued about is the Butcher Brothers' April Fool's Day, which is currently lensing in North Carolina. The originally, which is an awesome '80s flick, is still one of the worst cop-out endings of all time. So the question remains, what will this duo to bring something fresh to an otherwise tainted original? I guess we'll find out next year as Sony's Stage 6 Films will distribute the film. Read on for the story and the full casting news.
--Pictured: Taylor Cole Newly launched Sony label Stage 6 Films has signed on to distribute the Butcher Brothers' reimagination of the 1986 horror classic "April Fool's Day," currently filming in North Carolina, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The film is the latest addition to the new banner, which operates under the umbrella of Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group.
Stage 6 plans to distribute 10-15 films per year with budgets of $10 million or less. Whether the films will be released theatrically or straight to DVD is not decided beforehand.
The new "April Fool's" revolves around a party given by two uber rich siblings, played by Taylor Cole (Pictured; Supernatural) and Josh Henderson (Desperate Housewives), for their friend (Scout Taylor-Compton of Halloween announced here on B-D). Tragedy strikes when a friend falls over a balcony and dies. One by one, each partygoer is found dead.
Frank Mancuso Jr. and Tara Craig are producing. The Butcher Brothers team of Mitch Altieri and Phil Flores are directing. The duo, whose credits include last year's "The Hamiltons," also wrote the screenplay with Mikey Wigart.
Altieri said the new version, like the original, has some comedic moments and plays out a lot like the 1986 Fred Walton film.
"It's kind of more a twisting and turning story," he said. "There's some really good scares in there."
Added Flores, "It's pretty much contemporized, with off-beat humor, different settings -- something that would jell with today's audience."
The Butcher Bros. are represented by the Gersh Agency and Jeremy Platt at Spectacle Entertainment.
Cole is represented by Paradigm, Henderson is repped by Innovative Artists and Taylor-Compton is represented by Gersh.
Who writes this nonsense? Cop-out ending? Because it was a prank? God forbid the filmmakers do something different than what else was coming out at the time...The ending works 100% with the movie and the title...
I really liked the original including the ending but I suppose a remake doesn't bother me here. Since they are now remaking rather obscure films that didn't even do particularly well, I wonder what they will get to next? The Prowler, Madman, and The Burning may have the sights on them now and pretty soon we will have a remake to sit next to every original in our collections. Here's to hoping that's not the case.
See I can handle remakes, dariofulci speculated that "pretty soon we will have a remake to sit next to
every original in our collections."
I think that actually would be cool.
What it comes down to is the quality of the remakes though. With April Fool's Day you especially have a challenge as if you change the ending to be more in line with what people expect from a slasher it could become just another routine slasher film, but if you leave the same twist in as the original it would annoy fans of the original.
My advice would be do a twist ending, but make it different enough from the twist in the original that new and old fans dig it.
I feel bad for anyone reading the comments who hasn't seen the original as they're spoilers, but, ah well, I knew what the ending was generally about and still dug the movie.
This was one the movies focused on in the excellent slasher film documentary "Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film". So if they continue remaking slasher films which were mentioned in said documentary that have endings that some people don't dig, next we should be expecting a remake of "Happy Birthday to Me" and then "Friday the 13th 5: A New Beginning." That remake will have Wrong Turn inbred killers instead of the stereotyped backwoods ma and son duo, The Macarena instead of the robot dance, and the new Tommy Jarvis will not have made scary masks but instead be good at CGI. It'll be jiggy!
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Newly launched Sony label Stage 6 Films has signed on to distribute the Butcher Brothers' reimagination of the 1986 horror classic "April Fool's Day," currently filming in North Carolina, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
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